


While You're Away

by KiwisAndTea



Series: Teddy Stark [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I can't believe I have to tag that, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter calls Tony Dad, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22191028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiwisAndTea/pseuds/KiwisAndTea
Summary: "Alright, Teddy," he whispers, wiping harshly at the tears that haven't stopped falling since he crawled back through his window an hour ago. "Dad's not here right now. I wish he was." But Tony is on a business trip for the next three days and normally he wouldn't feel too guilty about calling him - because he's been tryingreallyhard to get Peter to understand that he's important, too - but he intentionally jam-packed his schedule so that he could return as soon as possible. It's not life or death, as much as Peter's chest aches and every breath is sharp and painful, so it can wait three days._____Strongly suggest reading parts 1 and 2 first.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Teddy Stark [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1430989
Comments: 22
Kudos: 290





	While You're Away

**Author's Note:**

> For all of you waiting patiently for more Teddy, here you go. Apologies for the angst. Maybe. ;)
> 
> Preliminary call for BETAS here, bc I probably would have had this out months ago if I had someone responsible for yelling at me. More details in the end notes.
> 
> Thanks, and don't hate me.

Peter stares at the bear propped against his pillows and sniffles into the knees he has hugged to his chest. The room is dark, save for the lively New York City lights filtering in through the window, and his heightened sight fights against the blur of tears threatening to eclipse his vision. Teddy waits patiently for the boy to find his voice, little plastic repulsor glowing in the dark.

Peter focuses on the hope that faint blue glow brings.

"Alright, Teddy," he whispers, wiping harshly at the tears that haven't stopped falling since he crawled back through his window an hour ago. "Dad's not here right now. I wish he was." But Tony is on a business trip for the next three days and normally he wouldn't feel too guilty about calling him - because he's been trying _really_ hard to get Peter to understand that he's important, too - but he intentionally jam-packed his schedule so that he could return as soon as possible. It's not life or death, as much as Peter's chest aches and every breath is sharp and painful, so it can wait three days.

He sniffles and tries to find the courage to admit what happened. "Someone died tonight. I let someone die tonight." The sob tears at his throat and he buries his face in his knees to try to keep quiet; the last thing he wants is to wake May. He can't tell her what happened, not after Ben, but he's also falling apart and in desperate need of comfort. If she comes in and asks what's wrong, he'll break, and he can't do that to her. He won't.

"And it's Ben all over again," Peter tells the bear, his voice rough and thick and crumbling at the edges. "Every time I close my eyes, it's Ben pushing me behind him, it's Ben getting shot, it's Ben bleeding and I can't stop it, I can't stop any of it. I tried, tonight, I-I tried to- I tried, I tried." The stuttered words fall away into a mantra he says to himself around chocked sobs and gasping breaths, rocking himself on the old mattress. "I tried to-to stop it, to take the bullet, but-" Another painful inhale cuts him off. It's Ben and it's a stranger, both of them bleeding out at the mouth of some dirty New York alley. He flexes his hands, scrubbed raw with hot water, but he can still feel the blood. They feel warm and sticky and unsteady, coated in guilt and failure. "I wasn't fast enough. The mugger got away. The man… died. He died. I watched him die."

Finally, he tilts forward into Teddy and just cries until he's so exhausted he knows the nightmares will not come. That night, he clings to the bear like he used to when he was a child, like he would to his dad if he were here.

Peter sleeps into the afternoon and lays awake in bed for hours after, only getting up when May comes home from work to at least pretend like everything is okay. She can see right through him, he can see that she can see right through him, but she doesn't ask. They have dinner and watch a movie with his head in her lap so that she can run her fingers through his hair, and if she notices him crying silently the entire way through, she doesn't mention it.

Not Saturday.

Not Sunday.

Not Monday, when he shuts off his alarm for school not having slept a wink and remains in bed.

Around noon, he gets the text he's been waiting for, an upbeat notification that Tony is finally back state-side. With surprisingly steady fingers, Peter types out ' _come over please_ ,' sets his phone back on his nightstand, and buries himself back beneath his blankets to wait.

When Tony knocks on the apartment door, his heart jumps into his throat.

"Hey, May."

"He's in his room."

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know. He's barely spoken a word to me in three days."

Footsteps.

Peter tenses, but the moment Tony slips through the door and shuts it behind him, the dam he'd carefully crafted over the past few days comes crashing down. He doesn't have to keep it together anymore, he doesn't have to be invincible. Here, with Tony, he can be broken.

He scrambles out of bed, kicking Teddy and his pile of blankets away as quick as he can before launching himself at his dad. The tears reignited before he'd even gotten to his feet, but they hit full force once he's enveloped in a warm, protective hug.

Tony's arms tighten around him. "Whoa, hey. What's wrong, kiddo?"

Three days of pent up guilt and grief are a vice on Peter's voice. Even if he wanted to speak, he could barely breathe, let alone form words. Instead, he sobs harder into a shirt worth more than his tuition and clings to the only person in the universe who might be able to understand.

"Okay, it's okay." One hand lifts to brush through his unkempt curls, tugging knots free while he whispers reassurances and praise. When that does little to mitigate the damage and it doesn't appear to be coming to an end any time soon, he shuffles them over to the bed where Peter curls into his side and fights to gain some sort of control back. Tony holds him close, rubbing circles on his back and pressing soft kisses into his hair, providing the comfort that breaks the teen down to his most vulnerable state. "You're going to be just fine, Pete, I promise. I've got you. You're okay."

He's exhausted, drained, the weight is back to crushing his chest and he just wants it to be over. He doesn't want to feel like this anymore. He doesn't want to feel tainted and dirty and incapable.

As he's winding down and catching his breath, a familiar object gets squished between him and Tony. Peter clutches the bear to his chest, drifting off to the sound of his father's steady heartbeat.

When he comes to, it's with images of bullets and blood behind his eyelids and a familiar rhythm beneath his ear. The two sensations clash in his tired mind - dead men do not have heartbeats - but then he feels fingers in his hair and the rumble of a comforting voice.

"Well good morning, sunshine."

Peter blinks open his eyes to find his room dimly lit by natural light and shifts back to look up at Tony in confusion. "It's morning already?"

"No, it's about five p.m."

"Oh."

Tony pushes the hair back from his face, looking down at him with a concern in his eye that somehow does not make Peter shrink away. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks gently, and it's clear that he doesn't want to push his luck, blissfully unaware that he is the only person Peter wants to talk to right now.

Even with the desire to spill the entire story, words are hard to come by. Peter refocuses on Teddy, still squished between them, hoping the stuffed animal he has already bared his soul to might help him find an appropriate place to start. "Um. On Friday- Patrol was, uh- It was going fine. I stopped a mugging, and a couple of assaults, and the drunk girl I walked home told me all about her dissertation, and I don't know a whole lot about pre-colonial ritual architecture, but it sounded really cool. But then I heard a scuffle a couple blocks from her apartment and when I went to check it out… he had a gun." And he can't erase the gleam of it whipping through the beam of a gritty yellow lamp from his mind. Time had slowed for those few seconds, and then sped up unbelievably fast. He hadn't hesitated to jump into action after that, but it was too late.

A glance at Tony in the resulting silence reveals only a quiet understanding. "What happened, Pete?"

A rush of adrenaline. A gunshot. A scream. The clattering of metal skidding across cement and echoing against brick.

"I wasn't fast enough." The hand rubbing idle circles on his back pauses just as his heartbeat picks up and tears burn his eyes. "I tried to stop him. I tried to-to take the bullet."

"Peter, no-"

"But I wasn't fast enough, he was already bleeding when I hit the ground. I kicked the gun out of the guy's hand, but it was too late, I was too late. I tried, I promise I tried to stop it-"

Tony pulls him back to his chest and holds him tight as the first tears slip out over his cheeks. "No, I know, it's okay. You did you're best and I am so proud of-"

"But he _died._ Dad, he died because of me."

"No," Tony interjects sharply.

"Because I wasn't fast enough. He died and I let his murderer get away and every time I close my eyes I see Ben dying over and over and over again." And he does, even now, burying his face in the chest of his newest role model. He sees stars and red and Ben, with that soft, sad look on his face just before he died. "I just want it to stop. Please. _Please_ make it stop."

Rough fingers dig into his back, grappling for the kind of purchase needed to hold a broken child together. Tony's head tips forward, resting on his, and Peter can feel his warm breath rustling his hair as he breathes deliberately slow against his racing heart. "I can't." It's a defeated declaration, one that softens the man's touch. "God, kid, I wish I could. You don't deserve this."

_Don't I?_

"You don't," Tony repeats, as if hearing his thoughts. "And I can't take it away; this shit, it sticks with you, it- it haunts you. Day and night." He pauses for a steadying breath, heartbeat slowing into a normal rhythm, loud and strong beneath his ear. "You have PTSD, Peter. I should have seen this coming, I should have known - that's on me - but I know now. And I can get you help, if you want it."

Putting a name to his feelings is both wonderfully liberating and terrifyingly binding.

Peter sniffs, pulls his knees up to his chest, and releases the grip he'd had on Tony's shirt to play with the sleeve on Teddy, now trapped against his chest. "Okay." He doesn't know yet, if he can talk about it to a stranger, or put most of his feelings into coherent thoughts into coherent words, but he knows without a shadow of a doubt that Tony will help when he's ready.

_PTSD._ It isn't unfamiliar, especially with the rising awareness of mental illnesses these days, but he'd always associated it with soldiers, hostages, those who had been kidnapped and tortured and forced to face their own mortality. For Peter, well, he'd lost his uncle. Lots of people lose their uncles. But, he supposed, now that he's had his metaphorical eyes opened by a big concrete thing like _PTSD,_ he could see that not everyone watches their uncle take a bullet for them. Not everyone watches their uncle bleed out right in front of them, and smile like everything would be okay.

"Pete," Tony says after a while of comfortable silence and idle fingers running through his hair, "why didn't you call me?"

He tries his best not to wince. "Dunno."

_"Peter."_

"You were busy," he mumbles, shrinking away from that tone that demands honesty.

Peter's head dips with Tony's deep, slow sigh. "How many times do I have to tell you I'm-"

"Never too busy for me, I know," he interrupts, huffing a bit before he lifts his head to meet the man's eye, "but you were, like, _really_ busy, and it was fine, it could wait a couple of days. I didn't want you to skip work things just 'cause- 'cause… of me."

Both of Tony's hands come up over Peter's ears to hold his head in place and make sure the eye contact gets properly intense. "Peter. I would gladly skip 'work things' for you."

"I know," he says, scrunching up his face a bit, "that's the problem. Ms. Potts wouldn't be happy if-"

"Peter," Tony interjects and then stops, thinking. His eyes bounce between each of Peter's for a second and then he drops his hands from his head and says more casually, "Pepper is never happy when I don't do what she asks me to, but she knows my weak spot, kid. And you know what? You're hers, too. So be it a scraped knee or a broken rib, a bad day at school or a full-blown panic attack, I am never too busy for you. Pepper will understand. Okay?"

"Uh- okay," he replies, a little dazed by the fact that _Virginia Potts_ likes him that much, and not processing much else.

"Good. And if she doesn't, we'll just have to make our 'I'm Sorry' cards together. You've still got crayons, right?"

Peter blinks, mind quickly catching up to the conversation. "I'm not a child."

Tony gives him a look that says he's being ridiculous. "'Course you are, look at you, you're tiny," he says, and suddenly Peter is wrapped back up in his father's arms, in a ball, with no wiggle room, getting squeezed to death, "still fit in my arms. You're like a baby. And babies," he goes on, dramatic as always, and drops his hold on the boy who rolls a bit back onto the bed, "have crayons."

Unfurling so as to avoid any more patronizing baby hugs, Peter deliberately sets Teddy off to the side and crosses his arms, staring at the bottom of his top bunk. "I'm sixteen. I don't have crayons."

"Markers?"

"You don't have any idea how children work, do you?"

"Nope, not a clue." When Peter doesn't reply, Tony lifts himself up on an elbow and pokes the boy's cheek. "But I know you. So, markers?"

Peter huffs reluctantly. "Every color under the Crayola sun."

"Atta boy. Now," he says, rolling smoothly off the bed and to his feet, "how does the baby feel about going to get ice cream?"

"I'm _sixteen."_

"Well that's unfortunate, because only babies get ice cream."

Peter throws Teddy at him and tries not to laugh.

"That's so disgraceful. I cannot believe Peter Parker, an outstanding citizen of this good city, would _yeet_ a member of his own family-"

"Ohmygod, dad, please shut up."

"I would love to, except there seems to be a distinct lack of ice cream in my mouth at the moment, which has left it free to say words like _yeet_ and _mood,"_ Tony says, causing Peter to put a pillow over his face and ears until Teddy collides with his chest. _"Yeet."_

"Dad, I'm begging you."

"Shoes on, sweater on, maybe put a comb through your hair. If there's one thing I've learned from the powerful women in my life, it's that ice cream solves all our hearts' problems."

"I don't think that's how it works," he says, even as he climbs to his feet and sweeps a foot beneath the bed in search of his shoes. His body is stiff from the days spent lying in bed and his face feels gross from crying, but he actually feels… better. Maybe the trauma won't go away, but at least he's not alone.

Tony throws an arm over his shoulder once his shoes are on and leads him out of the room. "I'm thinking Stark Raving Hazelnuts."

Peter rolls his eyes. "You're always thinking Stark Raving Hazelnuts."

"That's because it's the best."

"No it's not, you're just biased."

"And you aren't?"

He scoffs at the notion, but maybe he is biased, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately I am incapable of not writing a happy ending, so you're welcome.
> 
> Second plea for betas because I am awful at keeping up with writing, but I have SO many unfinished things and new ideas. So anyone interested in reading things before I publish, and especially in discussing all these half-fleshed out plot ideas I have, hmu. I don't so much need an editor as I need someone(s) to bounce ideas off of and keep me true to the characters. The more the merrier.
> 
> Everyone welcome to scream at me on tumblr (@kiwisandtea), don't mind the absolute mess.


End file.
